


When Worlds Collide

by Brumeier



Series: Sentinel NexGen [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Community: ushobwri, Family, Gen, Hiking, Sasquatch, Sentinel/Guide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 17:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12347604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Sentinel Maggie and her Guide/cousin Jamie are enjoying a day off when they have a very unexpected encounter with something that's not even supposed to exist.





	When Worlds Collide

**Author's Note:**

> For Monster Fest: Evolutionary Throwback day at [You Should Be Writing](https://ushobwri.dreamwidth.org/171390.html)

Maggie loved autumn in the Cascades. The Aspen trees glowed golden and the air was so crisp she could smell campers roasting marshmallows a good ten miles away without even trying. For whatever reason, her senses were more finely tuned when the weather turned colder.

It was technically Maggie’s day off, and she’d talked to Jamie about maybe going to town, but in the end neither of them had wanted to waste such a nice day with mundane activities like grocery shopping and getting haircuts. They could do that the next time they went to visit the family.

“Deep thoughts?” Jamie asked.

He was sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket, Kiska sprawled next to him with her tongue lolling.

“Just thinking how much I love it here.” Maggie leaned back on her elbows and watched the clouds drift by.

Jamie made a non-committal noise. Maggie knew he’d been talking to Uncle Chief about honest interests versus a response to the wants and needs of the Sentinel or Guide. Jamie was honestly concerned that he might have unknowingly altered the course of Maggie’s life.

Even after all these years he was still a doofus.

“Let it go, man. We’re lucky. Just accept it.”

“I know how lucky we are, Magpie.”

“Then stop worrying about the why. You’re harshing my wilderness high.”

Jamie laughed, and Maggie could feel the worry slipping away through their bond. As a Guide he couldn’t help overthinking things, so it was up to Maggie to lighten the mood when it was warranted.

Besides, it was true. They _were_ lucky. Jamie had always loved animals, had always known he wanted to work with them. He’d gone through veterinary school and spent a month at Cascade Animal Hospital before he got involved with the Washington Department of Fish and Game’s dog training program. At the same time, Maggie, who’d considered and abandoned several career options, ended up talking to a special agent with the US Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement at a job fair. Things had just clicked for both of them.

Getting to be partners was either fate or, more likely, family intervention. Mimi had a lot of unexpected contacts and never hesitated to call in favors, and Maggie’s father knew some people in high places as well. However it happened, she was grateful to be doing something she loved with the person she was closest to.

Together they packed up the remains of lunch – sealing everything into an animal-proof container – and patrolled their picnic spot to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind. Kiska watched them, still sprawled, until Jamie whistled for her and then she snapped right to attention and heeled.

“Good girl.” Jamie scratched her behind the ears.

“Which way, Guide?” Maggie asked teasingly.

Jamie tugged her ponytail. “You know I have the Sandburg sense of direction.”

“You just like making me do all the hard work.”

“Well, duh.”

Maggie smacked him on the arm. “Real mature.” She walked off, purposefully keeping her strides long so Jamie would have to walk faster to keep up; he’d also inherited Uncle Chief’s short stature.

They hiked along a ridge that gave them an excellent view of the valley below. On the other side Mount Rainier towered above them, glaciers in full view. Maggie was especially attuned to that peak, which was actually an active volcano. She monitored tremors, sulphuric emissions, and the surrounding wildlife and vegetation. If Rainier ever went the way of Mount St. Helens, Maggie was determined to have enough advanced warning to get people to safety.

“Let’s try this trail,” Maggie said when Jamie finally caught up to her. “See where it takes us.”

“This is a trail?” Jamie looked dubiously at the slope in front of them. “Another one of your deer paths?”

“It’s an adventure!” Maggie spread her arms out with dramatic flourish.

“So were the leeches,” Jamie reminded her. 

Maggie shuddered at the memory. She reached out with her senses, feeling her way along the trail and building a complete mental representation of it.

“No leeches,” she reported. “Lots of bugs, though. A ground squirrel. And…”

“And?” Jamie prompted softy. He put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder to help her focus.

Maggie closed her eyes. There was something else there, something that made her skin itch. “And…I’m not sure. Do you smell that? It’s like…wet dog and compost and skunk cabbage.”

“Gross. No, I don’t smell it.”

“Does Kiska?”

“She’s not giving any of the usual signs,” Jamie said. “But she’s antsy. Something’s bothering her.”

“It’s…I don’t…” Maggie shook her head, trying to clear it. She felt vaguely sick and her internal alarm bells were going off.

“Maggie? What’s wrong?”

She could barely hear Jamie over the pounding in her ears: her own heartbeat, Jamie’s, Kiska’s. And another one that didn’t belong. Her eyes popped open.

“This is _my_ territory,” she spat out, and plunged down the trail before Jamie could stop her. She could feel him trying to calm her down through the shared bond but she was overwhelmingly angry and she didn’t understand why.

She was so hell-bent on tracking the intruder that she didn’t see the gap until it was too late. The ground dropped out from under her and she flailed madly for purchase at the scrubby brush growing there, but only managed to slice up the palms of her hands.

Maggie fell, doing an instinctive tuck and roll that saved her from broken bones but painfully jarred her shoulder. She ended up lying on her side, gasping for breath. She dialed down the pain to something more manageable before attempting to get to her feet.

“Maggie!” Jamie’s frantic cries and Kiska’s barking were muffled, and Maggie couldn’t tell if it was because of the pounding in her ears or the sense of wrongness that was swamping all of her senses.

“I’m here!” she called back.

Maggie cradled her left arm to her chest – she was pretty sure her shoulder wasn’t dislocated, but she didn’t want to do any further damage to it – and tried to figure out where she was. The lighting was dim where she was standing, so she dialed up vision until she could see enough to know she was in a cave. 

She had a moment to be annoyed over the turn the day had taken before that weird smell was back, so strong it brought tears to her eyes. She dialed down smell, and while she was at it she bumped down touch to take the worst of the itch out of her skin.

Whatever she’d been chasing was down in the cave with her.

Maggie pulled her hunting knife, but before she could swing it around something heavy hit her in the back of the head, hard enough to drive her to her knees and make her see stars. The knife clattered the ground. The last thing Maggie saw before she passed out was her spirit animal hissing with rage.

*o*o*o*

Consciousness returned in stages, each one worse than the last. Smell first, choking and foul, and Maggie ruthlessly dialed that down to zero without caring about the consequences. Touch next. Her skin felt like it was crawling with ants, and the exposed flesh on her arms and face was rubbing against something unpleasantly matted and coarse.

She was still underground, but it took her muddled, pounding head a minute to make sense of what she was seeing. And then she started struggling, because she was slung over the shoulder of the hairy beast that had knocked her out, and he was carrying her away.

“Put me down!”

Maggie tried to buck up off the thing’s shoulder but scraped her back on cave ceiling. How the hell high up was she?

She reached out across the bond. _Jamie!_

 _We’re coming. Kiska has your scent_. The words were confident, but there was a tremor of fear running underneath them.

 _Gonna hug a tree_. Which meant she needed to get the creature to stop.

There wasn’t a handy belt or pair of pants to grab hold of, so instead Maggie planked, holding herself rigid. The creature grumbled at the change in her position, and then howled when Maggie slammed her elbow into its ear. When it let go of her legs she dug her fingers into its hairy pelt and slid over its shoulder, twisting to land on her feet. Her injured shoulder was an agony and that was another mental dial ruthlessly twisted.

The creature growled and turned, and holy crap. Was Maggie seeing what she thought she was seeing?

It was tight quarters, and the creature towered over her, but Maggie thought she could outrun it. At the very least she could kick it in its…well, _his_ …exposed, fur-covered genitals. But the creature didn’t make any threatening moves, just stood there rubbing his ear and glaring at Maggie from under a heavy brow.

“Okay. Well…I’m gonna go.” Maggie took a sliding step backward, and the creature grunted at her.

“Maggie.” Jamie’s voice was Sentinel soft, but close by. He was coming from the opposite end of the rocky tunnel.

Interestingly, the creature tipped his head as if he could hear Jamie too.

 _Nice and slow_ , Maggie sent across the bond.

It wasn’t Jamie she had to worry about, though. It was Kiska. The dog started growling, low and deep, and the creature began to get agitated. Maggie took another step back, to get some space between them, and then Jamie was there, barely holding Kiska back on her lead. 

Maggie was relieved to see her Guide, but also more on edge now that he was there because their situation was so tenuous. Kiska was trained to fight off bears, but in such a small space there was a lot of potential for injury on all fronts. And Maggie really wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

The creature and Kiska growled at each other, but Jamie just stared. 

“Maggie Grace, what the hell am I looking at right now?” he asked in a whisper.

“I’m no expert,” Maggie replied in an equally hushed voice. “But I think it’s Sasquatch.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

The creature cocked its head at Jamie, and made a tentative trilling sound, and all at once the realization hit Maggie like a ton of bricks. The itching on her skin, her crazy anger…of course!

“He’s a Sentinel,” Jamie said, echoing Maggie’s thoughts. His eyes were wide as saucers. “Dad’s never going to believe this.”

It made so much sense, though. No-one had ever found definitive evidence of Sasquatch, though people were always looking. With Sentinel senses, the creature could easily avoid human contact. Uncle Chief was going to lose his mind when they told him, and would most likely be stomping around the woods looking to make contact before Maggie’s dad could stop him.

Maggie could feel the push of Jamie’s Guide powers, though they weren’t aimed at her. Sasquatch trilled again, and then he abruptly relaxed, long arms hanging limply at his sides.

“I think we have an understanding,” Jamie said. “He won’t cause us any more trouble.”

He held out his hand and Maggie moved gingerly past the creature until she could grab hold. Her touch dial was down so low she could barely feel it. She dialed back up, and Jamie’s touch was a soothing balm for all her jagged edges. Maggie hugged him, nose tucked against the side of his neck. It took some concentration to get her scent dial back to a low normal.

“That was interesting,” she murmured.

“You scared me.”

“I scared myself.”

“Why can’t we ever have a normal day off together?” Jamie asked despondently. 

“Next time,” Maggie promised.

Kiska butted her head against Maggie’s leg until Maggie reached down to pet her. Once Sasquatch had calmed down, so had the dog. Another crisis averted.

“Let’s get you home and cleaned up,” Jamie said.

They both looked back at Sasquatch, who was watching them almost unblinkingly. Maggie wondered what he was thinking. Did he have a companion? A primitive Guide? Or was he alone, a lonely Sentinel out in the wilderness?

Jamie made a passable attempt at mimicking Sasquatch’s trill, and the creature shook its shaggy head before it turned and shambled away, back up the tunnel.

Maggie leaned on her Guide, more grateful for him than she’d ever be able to express.

“Love you, too,” Jamie said.

*o*o*o*

“It’s like a joke,” Uncle Chief said with a wide grin. “Two evolutionary throwbacks walk into a cave.”

Maggie rolled her eyes, but her dad wasn’t ready to make jokes.

“This is serious, Sandburg. The kids could’ve been killed.” 

Jim Ellison stalked around the living room, eyes on the windows. He’d insisted on driving up as soon as Maggie told him what had happened. Uncle Chief had only been able to delay him a couple of days. Well, mom and Aunt Jenny had done their best too.

“But they weren’t. Don’t you understand how important this is? Not only that a primitive creature like this is still alive and thriving in this day and age, but that it’s a Sentinel!” Uncle Chief stood in the middle of the room, gesturing broadly.

Maggie hid a grin. It was just like old times.

“I mean, is it just primates? Or do other species have Sentinels? How far does this go?”

 _Time to do some research_ , Jamie mouthed at Maggie.

“Obviously it’s time to do some research,” Uncle Chief said.

“Has there been any sign of it since the cave?” Maggie’s dad asked.

“He brought us a dead elk,” Jamie said.

“I don’t like it.”

Maggie got in her dad’s way and wrapped her arms around him. “I won’t tell you not to worry, because I know you too well, but I will tell you that Sasquatch doesn’t scare me. He doesn’t want to hurt us. We’re sharing territory, so if you think about it I’ve never been safer.”

Her dad hugged her tight and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “The older you get, the more you sound like your uncle. Not sure I like that.”

“Too many years in the Sandburg Zone,” Uncle Chief said with a laugh.

Everyone laughed with him, but Maggie knew her dad was also listening for Sasquatch. So was she. Did the creature have a family of his own? 

She really hoped so.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** I knew I wanted to write a sasquatch story for Monster Fest, but I didn't know what fandom I wanted to use. And then I got thinking about Maggie and Jamie and thought...that's it! I always had their future planned out, even though when I left off writing them Maggie was only in Kindergarten. It's been ages since I took these characters out to play with, but they're never very far from my mind.


End file.
